From Laundromats to Radiolab: Jad Abumrad Peers into Thao Nguyen’s Old Soul

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We asked Jad Abumrad, co-host of popular WNYC radio show and podcast Radiolab—a self-described “show about curiosity”—to interview singer-songwriter Thao Nguyen, who has been performing with him on stage for the show’s live tour, “Radiolab Live: In the Dark”. The live show has been called “a kind of vaudevillian revue” (by the LA Times), and a “nerd circus” (by fellow touring comedian Demetri Martin).Tell me about your first memory of hearing music. It sounds like I have orchestrated this memory, but truly I remember laying down in front of the speakers listening to Smokey Robinson singing “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me.”

Really, when was that? Young—maybe five or six? That’s the first clear memory I have.

And what mood or feeling is associated with that memory? Deep fulfillment. I think that I was maybe the most content I’ll ever be in my life.

Wow. And to think you got it out of the way so early. I know, now I’m just killing time.

Did you come from a musical family? Not really. I think that my dad, my parents listened to music but no one really played music. There was a guitar in the house but no one really played it. I just picked it up eventually when I was eleven or twelve. I was just very bored and lonely and I picked it up.

Your father—he didn’t by any chance play music, did he? He played guitar a little bit. I think he had really good taste in music. He listened to old country, he listened to Marty Robbins. You know that song “El Paso”? It was really funny to hear a man with a very specific Vietnamese accent singing it like that. Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl. He would always sing that.

Marty Robbins sings “El Paso.”

What did your parents do? My mom when I was really young worked… I don’t know what she did, really. I think she was a stay-at-home mom, and then my parents split up. My dad was an electrician. Or something. And he took his leave and then my mom—we were sort of left in the lurch and so she had to scramble to provide and she got a bunch of loans together and she bought this laundromat and drycleaner’s when I was twelve. So that was my life and I worked there all the time. And that’s been her life. I’m twenty-eight now, so for sixteen years she’s been there, seven days a week, fifteen, sixteen hour days. And you know, I saw her when I was there but otherwise… working. She just sold her shop last week and she retired.

You said when you were twelve, you worked there? Yeah. We didn’t have a change machine so I had to make change by hand. And then I sat at the counter, and then I also folded laundry because there was a wash dry and fold service, which was sort of the bread and butter of the business. People—mostly middle-aged bachelors—would drop off laundry and my mom would wash it and I would dry it and fold it. For-ever. Forever. I haven’t folded any laundry in my adult life because I had to take a stand.

(Jared Kelley / Courtesy WNYC)

I bet there’s all kinds of sordid tales to tell about working in a laundromat. Oh yeah. There’s a few.

Like people bringing you their dirty clothes? There must be some strange bags that you open. Oh yeah. But mostly, when they come to pick it up and you look at them in the eye, you look at them and you tell them, I know about you.

Your family comes from where exactly? Comes from Vietnam. But my parents, they met in North Carolina. And they were both sort of relocated. They were both involved in the South Vietnamese government and so at the end of the war they were not able to return. And they were both abroad. My mom was in Laos and my dad was—I guess he was flying missions. I don’t know. I never paid enough attention. And then they both were relocated to what I guess you would call one of those refugee camps—

In this country? Yeah, in this country. In North Carolina. It was sort of a holding pattern for folks while they waited to get sponsored, and they were sponsored by a church in North Carolina.

Were they religious, or that was just what they could get? No. That’s just what they could get. But then, somehow my brother and I both ended up going to Catholic pre-school, and we’re not a religious family.

I can’t imagine you in a Catholic school. It was terrible. I cried every day for the first day. And Jad, can you believe this? This also sounds orchestrated, but the teachers who took care of us—they were Miss and Mrs. Sour. It was a mother and daughter.

What? That was their name? Yeah. Miss Sour and Mrs. Sour.

Oh god. Awful. Well, I don’t know if that’s awful or appropriate. It was appropriate. Yeah. They were sour.

Jad Abumrad is co-host and producer of the nationally syndicated program Radiolab. He has reported and produced documentaries on a variety of subjects for such public radio programs as All Things Considered and On the Media. He received a 2011 MacArthur “genius” grant. THAO NGUYEN is a singer-songwriter who performs with the Get Down Stay Down. She is touring and performing with Radiolab Live: In the Dark.

Events

When journalist Ian Jack first visited India in 1976, he found steam locomotives, a sluggish economy, and a national literature that had been largely written by outsiders--say, J.G. Farrell, E.M. Forster, or Larry Collins. In the last few decades, Indian writing has boomed: consider the rise of Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, and South Asian journalism. Come join us for a special reading to celebrate Granta’s special issue, India:Another Way of Seeing featuring contributors Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Kalpana Narayanan, and Ian Jack, who edited the issue.

Amitava Kumar--the author of A Matter of Rats--reads about what it’s like to experience grief as his mother’s funeral pyre burns on the banks of the Ganges. (Read about the time he asked bookstores to direct him to their “white literature section” in The Margins.) Named one of the top British novelists of his generation, Hari Kunzru reads dystopian science fiction in a story called Drone. Kalpana Narayanan reads from her short story The Bachelor Father--it begins when its main character gets fired from his job at the laundromat and finds his comfort food in pizza delivery and Indian soap operas. Check out an interview with her here. The evening will be introduced and moderated by Guardian columnist and former Granta editor Ian Jack. Founded in 1889, Granta is one of the foremost English language journals. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/

Did you know that many writing contests require you to be a US citizen? While this requirement may initially seem benign, these contests end up excluding millions of writers of color from applying every year. More than ten million migrants a year are explicitly barred from submitting to both artists grants and major writing contests, like the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Walt Whitman. Poets Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Javier Zamora, and Christopher Soto have authored a petition requesting that writing contests change their guidelines and get out of the business of checking passports. Originally published in Apogee journal, the petition was signed by 400 writers and called for an end to discriminatory judging practices. If you believe we need diverse books, come for a special reading featuring Javier Zamora, Wo Chan, Sonia Guiñansaca, and Jennifer Tamayo. Hosted by Christopher Soto. Co-sponsored with Culturestrike.

★ Wo Chan is a Kundiman Fellow, Lambda Literary Fellow, Poets House Emerging Literary Fellow, and a Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop--as well as a make-up artist by day and a performer with the drag alliance, Switch n’ Play by night. ★ CultureStrike UndocuWriting Coordinator Sonia Guiñansaca organized the first UndocuWriting Retreat and the forthcoming anthology, Home In Time of Displacement. She was part of the New York State Leadership Council, the first undocumented youth-led, membership-led, organization that empowers immigrant youth. ★ Jennifer Tamayo is the Managing Editor of Futurepoem and author Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes (Switchback 2011) and the chapbook POEMS ARE THE ONLY REAL BODIES (Bloof Books 2013). Ronaldo Wilson describes her second book YOU DA ONE (Coconut Books 2014) by writing, “The ‘I’ in this stunningly original collection is stripped of its singular subjectivity, screen shot into a “contiguous state” of her fluid worlds that compellingly, and luckily, Tamayo shares with us in ours.” ★ Born in La Herradusa, El Savador, Javier Zamora immigrated to the US when he was nine and is a CantoMundo fellow and Bread Loaf scholarship recipient. ★ Christopher Soto is an MFA candidate at NYU and the author of the chapbook “How to Eat Glass” (Still Life Press 2012) and his poems melodically blend English and Spanish, an homage to his Puerto Rican and Salvadorian roots. /\ /\ \/\/ \/\/